January 4, 2017
Paris \u2014 When the copyright expired on Adolf Hitler\u2019s Mein Kampf at the end of 2015 \u2013 opening shelf space for a new critical edition \u2013 some Germans worried it would become a hit at precisely the worst time. Some 1 million refugees had entered Germany, stirring anti-immigrant sentiment that has buoyed the once-taboo far-right.
This week, the publisher of \u201cHitler, Mein Kampf: A Critical Edition\u201d seemed to confirm moderates‘ worst fears, announcing that the two-volume annotated edition was a non-fiction best-seller in Germany last year, just as Hitler\u2019s original was between the two world wars.
But the demand is being driven not by neo-Nazis, the publisher says \u2013 rather, by teachers, libraries, history buffs, and those yearning to understanding the parallels between the populism of now and then.
Sven Felix Kellerhoff, a German author and journalist, wrote a book called \u201cMein Kampf,“ in 2015, tracing the history of a tome whose title is well-known but whose content is not. He says his book and the new critical edition help destroy the enigma surrounding a treatise that is badly written and poorly conceptualized but laid the groundwork for World War II. The original, which outlines Hitler\u2019s hatred of Jews and ultimately led to the Holocaust, was banned at the end of that devastating conflict. But prohibition in more recent times has tended to shroud it in mystery, he says.
\u201cMein Kampf was dangerous only as a myth, as a rumor, as a so-called \u2018banned book.\u2019 Now, with the very good scientific edition and maybe a little bit with my own book, this myth is destroyed,\u201d Mr. Kellerhoff says.
The Munich-based Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ), which published the 1,948-page work, initially planned to print 4,000 copies, and at the time acknowledged the sensitivity around its publication for the first time since 1945. Tuesday it announced it has since sold 85,000 copies and is releasing its sixth edition at the end of January.
„It turned out that the fear the publication would promote Hitler’s ideology or even make it socially acceptable and give neo-Nazis a new propaganda platform was totally unfounded,“ IfZ director Andreas Wirsching said in a statement. \u201cOn the contrary, the discussion about Hitler’s world view and how to deal with his propaganda offered the opportunity to look at the disastrous roots and consequences at a time when authoritarian political ideas and right-wing slogans are again gaining followers.\u201d
That sentiment speaks to an entire cultural rethink of remnants of the Reich. While reporting a Christian Science Monitor magazine story last year in Nuremberg, which was contemplating how to preserve the Nazi Rally Grounds, I met Cornelia Kirchner-Feyerabend, a high school history teacher. That day, she was thumbing through an antique edition of an original \u201cMein Kampf\u201d that one of her students brought in. It was his great-uncle\u2019s, who received it as a wedding gift from his city’s mayor.
She said her own high school teacher would not have dared bring the book into his classroom. At that time, Hitler\u2019s text was treated as something to be locked in the \u201cpoison cabinet.\u201d She couldn\u2019t wait to get her hands on the new critical edition , which had sold out quickly.
The book’s debut last year happened to fall just after mass sexual assaults during Cologne\u2019s New Year\u2019s Eve celebration, which was blamed mainly on men of North African and Middle Eastern descent and inflamed anti-refugee sentiment.
At a bookstore at the city\u2019s train station, one customer told me his uncle had asked him to buy him a copy. He refused on the grounds that he wanted nothing to do with Hitler, \u201cthat psychopath.\u201d
Another customer admitted he\u2019d be self-conscious about flipping through pages in public because he wouldn\u2019t want anyone to think it was out of contempt for the refugees who have come to Germany. But he planned to buy \u201cHitler, Mein Kampf: A Critical Edition“ because he saw an opportunity to glean new insights. \u201cYou get a chance to learn more about that history, to understand it\u2019s not the truth,\u201d he said.
Mr. Kellerhoff says when he takes his own book to German schools, he always gets the same response: a recognition by the students that Mein Kampf offers only simplistic answers to difficult problems.
\u201dIt\u2019s like the refugees. Of course you can say all refugees should get out of Europe,“ he says. „But that is not possible. It\u2019s a simple answer. \u2026 This thinking leads to catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n

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